Last month, actor Jonathan Majors was arrested after allegedly assaulting a woman in New York City. The details are still coming to light, but the effects have been quick: Majors’ talent manager Entertainment 360 and his PR firm The Lede Company have both dropped him, and multiple projects he’s associated with — including the upcoming film The Man In My Basement, a biopic about Otis Reddint, and an ad campaign for the Texas Rangers baseball team — have all cut ties with him, per The A.V. Club.
And now, Variety reports that “multiple alleged abuse victims of Majors” have come forward since his arrest to talk with the Manhattan district’s attorney office. The DA had no comment.
Throughout all of this, Majors’ attorney Priya Chaudhry has been consistent. “Jonathan Majors is innocent and has not abused anyone,” she told Deadline in a statement. “We have provided irrefutable evidence to the District Attorney that the charges are false. We are confident that he will be fully exonerated.”
Hollywood is “waiting to see what Marvel will do” about Jonathan Majors
Time will tell whether Majors rides this out or if he spells the end of his career, to say nothing of his freedom. At the moment, Majors’ most prominent employer — Marvel Studios, for whom he plays the villain Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — has remained silent.
So far as Majors’ career is concerned, Marvel’s opinion will be crucial. “I think the truth is everyone is waiting to see what Marvel will do,” one industry insider told Variety. “It doesn’t mean everyone will do the same thing, but that’s what people are looking to.”
Kang has already debuted as Kang in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. He’ll also play the character in the second season of Loki, coming to Disney+. Kang is set to feature in movies in the future, although we’ll see if Majors will play him or if Disney will recast the role.
Disney settles with fired exec Victoria Alonso
Speaking of Disney’s PR troubles, Variety reports that it has headed off a potential legal battle by paying a multimillion-dollar settlement to Victoria Alonso, who previously served as Marvel’s President of Physical, Post Production, VFX, and Animation until Disney fired her.
Disney claimed that it fired Alonso “for cause”; specifically, for producing the Amazon documentary Argentina, 1985, which Disney claimed she did in breach of her contract. It’s probably also worth noting that Marvel has taken a drubbing recently over both the quality of its VFX and the shoddy way it treats VFX workers.
Alonso, on the other hand, argued that she — an LGBTQ+ woman of color — was fired for speaking out against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Whatever the truth, it’s resolved with this settlement, the terms of which are private.
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